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Ralphs. Fresh for everyone. Radical Personal Finance operates under the principles of crowdsourcing and crowdfunding. Basically, it works like this. I create the show here with a complete and undiluted focus on you, the audience, trying to bring you content that is helpful and, in fact, life-changing. And then I give you the opportunity to voluntarily return value for value.

For details on how you can do that and all of the additional benefits you receive, please go to RadicalPersonalFinance.com/patron. Today on the show, we talk about the business model of conferences. We're going to dig into the story behind the FinCon conference, formerly known as the Financial Bloggers Conference, with Philip Taylor, founder of FinCon and also his original personal finance blog, PTMoney.com.

Welcome to the Radical Personal Finance Podcast. My name is Joshua Sheets. Today, we dig into the money-making potential of conferences because there's always a flip side. Remember, I've talked about the benefits of going to conferences. What about the benefits of actually creating conferences? That's what we're going to talk about today because there are a lot of benefits, both financial and otherwise, and we're talking to the expert.

Philip Taylor is the founder of the FinCon conference. I just call it FinCon, but it seems like it needs something more. FinCon conference, formerly the Financial Bloggers Conference, he rebranded it from the Financial Bloggers to FinCon to account for the larger growth of financial media, things like financial podcasts, etc.

FinCon is going into its fifth year this year, and it is widely regarded in the personal finance community as an excellent conference, very fun, very worthwhile. I went last year for the first time and thoroughly enjoyed it. You saw that reflected in the content of the show. There were dozens of interviews and people that I met and connections that came out of that.

I'm excited to be going back again this year. In fact, I'm actually going to be speaking at FinCon this year. But I wanted to bring you the story behind it because one of the things I like to look for is to say, "Where can you build an additional revenue stream?" Philip Taylor, a PT as he's known in the personal finance community, has built that.

He started with--well, he was a CPA by training and then he transitioned to a personal finance blog called PT Money and then ultimately to creating and developing FinCon, which has become his primary business pursuit. It's a great story. Hope you learned a lot. Think about how you can apply these principles to your own situation, even if it's not personal finance.

Just think about what he did and as part of his success journey, how he accomplished these things little by little. I think you'll be inspired and educated today. Here we go. Philip Taylor, welcome to the show. I appreciate you making time for me this morning. Absolutely, Josh. Thanks for having me on, man.

This is my pleasure. I'm excited about digging into your story this morning because from what I've learned ever since we met at FinCon last year and just looking into your story a little bit, it seems like you have had this fascinating journey into entrepreneurship. You've taken some turns that have led you into a unique space.

What I'd love for you to just start with is tell us the story of how you went from mainstream auditor and CPA to what you're doing now. Sure. Like you said, I come from a traditional accounting background. My dad's a CPA as well. And so I just sort of fell into that line of work without really knowing what I wanted to do when I grew up.

But I was good at it, so I did that for a while. Ten years, actually, I was in sort of the traditional financial world. And I like certain aspects about that, like the consistency, the comfort, the safety, the security, and a little bit of the sort of the interaction with my colleagues and things like that.

I didn't necessarily enjoy the actual work work, maybe just because it wasn't as autonomous and independent as I think it needed to be. I didn't want to necessarily have my own accounting practice, though. I didn't really care for one-on-one client work or what – I didn't feel like I was well-suited for it.

So I was always kind of searching for something, and I know people out there may can relate to that, that their inner career and they just sort of haven't figured out what they want to do yet. And so that's kind of where I was for almost ten years of my life.

So I was getting married, and a little bit before that I was getting passionate about personal finance, like many people do when they get serious about their life and about their finances. They dig into some Dave Ramsey, like you did, same here with me, digging into some other books.

I picked up David Fox's Automatic Millionaire. I still recommend that book. I love it. And it just got me geeked out about it. I also started finding these personal finance blogs online. This was about 2004, 2005, 2006, somewhere around that time frame. And so I just became a mega consumer of this information, reading as much as I could.

If there was any audio programs like Dave Ramsey or any other radio shows, I would try to listen to them. And I just stick to it. It sort of answered the personal finance question in my life. I was a CPA, so I knew about taxes, knew about investing. But there's still that personal finance side when it comes to managing your money daily, being careful with debt, and really making progress with saving money, living below your means.

Those are the kinds of things that they can't really teach you in books or classes. You sort of have to know the behavioral aspects of it to make changes. So that's kind of where I was. And in 2007, that all kind of came to a head. At the time, I was still working as an auditor, internal auditor for a major corporation.

And I had some free time during the day and nights and weekends as well to just kind of dabble in the internet space. Before that, I had done a little bit of blogging just on the personal side, so I was familiar with the platform. I wasn't a writer necessarily, but I was comfortable enough putting stuff out there online and doing some of the technical stuff.

So 2007, which is now what, eight years ago? April 2007, I started my first blog. It was called Primetime Money at the time. And the address was PTMoney@blogspot or something like that. So I started on Blogger and just dabbled for six or seven months and just kind of failed several times and started, stopped, restarted.

And then in January of 2008, I found sort of a tribe of other bloggers doing the same thing, really connected with them online, got to know them personally. And something about that and I think the fresh start of the new year just sort of catapulted me into taking it seriously and really putting my best effort into it, blogging every day.

And so in 2008, I changed it to PTMoney.com. I blogged anonymously as PT there so I could share more details of my finances. And what I did was just every day shared what I thought was important to me about money, about how I was handling my money, about the topics around personal finance and investing that were of interest to me, gleaning some knowledge from my tax and investing background to kind of interject into that as well.

And it just kind of worked. I could feel it working. I could feel the sense of connection with an audience. I could feel myself learning from that experience. And so 2008 was a really awesome year for me, just developing that site and kind of getting myself into that world of becoming a personal finance blogger.

What was the important factor of your blogging every day? Was it that that created a closer bond with your audience or was it because it transformed you as a writer? What impact did that have? For me, it was just because I was bubbling up with the information. I could not do it every day.

I think I would have had to withhold. I've since come down from that pace but initially I just had so many ideas and so many concepts. And back then blogging was more, for me at least, it was more like a journal, like a log. And so it was quick snippets here and there.

It wasn't 800,000 word posts every day. It was just kind of things I was finding interesting or updates on my own life or sharing something from the community. There was a big community aspect to the blogosphere back then. And so it was no deal for me to share that, "Hey, this person has this great article.

Go check it out." That was one of my blog posts for the day. I would make a commentary on it but that's just kind of the world it was back then. But anyway, to answer your question, I was just immersed in it completely, 100% passionate about it. And so I did that for a couple of years, 2008 to 2010.

And then in January of 2010, the site was actually – we had figured out how to convert some of that traffic and that audience over into some advertising dollars. That sounds so shady. Wow. It's all right. It's reality. We figured out how to monetize the site. And so that gave me an option.

Hey, do I want to do this instead of what I'm currently doing, which was, like I said, internal auditing for some companies. What percentage of your income that you were making as an auditor was the site? Was it a part of your income, more than your income? Yeah. So it took me four months starting in 2008 to make my first big check from Google.

By the time I left my job in 2010, I was making probably 25% of my – well, maybe a little more than that, maybe 30% of my monthly income from my regular job. So it was not blowing it out of the water, so to speak. But I felt like by that time we had fixed our financial situation.

And so taking a leap into entrepreneurship was a lot more comfortable. I was still nervous about it. I mean it was during the recession. Even though I'm an accountant at CPA, even our industry wasn't necessarily immune to some of those effects. I live here in Texas, so there are jobs aplenty, but still I knew it would take a while to get a job again.

So we had plenty of savings. We had all of our debt removed from our life. We just had our complete finances fixed. And so that gave me the confidence and the ability to kind of take that leap. So that's what I did in sort of the beginning of 2010.

The company was going to send me on a three-week trip to India for the second time, and normally that would be awesome. I had been to India before and enjoyed that experience. But this time around, it was going to overlap my child's first birthday. I just pleaded with the boss to make some changes and kind of send me somewhere different or let me do it kind of a different way.

They just weren't having it. So I just realized the job was no longer really compatible with the lifestyle that I wanted. And hey, I built this income stream that was more compatible. And so that's what I did. So I took the leap. Real quick, I want to ask a question.

So you first started paying close attention to your finances in about 2007, you said? No, about 2004. Yeah, 2004. Okay, so then it was from 2004 to 2010. So over that six years, you had primarily just been focusing heavily on paying off debt, building savings, walking through, whether it was baby steps or whatever process you were using, and just getting more stable, right?

That's exactly right. And my wife and I got married in 2006, and so we joined forces in doing that. And she's an awesome partner in that. I couldn't have asked for someone more compatible with that. And so we got rid of our student loans. We both had those. We got rid of our car notes.

We both had those. We saved for a down payment for our house. I mean, we just did. We're just knocking it out. And we had two incomes. So I say it's pretty easy when you've got two incomes. If you make those things a priority. Did you, when transitioning from the accounting job to the website when it was making 30% of your income, was your wife also earning an income at that time?

No. No, she was actually at home with the baby and in school, as a matter of fact. So she was at home and spending money on education. So, yeah, no, it was a true leap in that sense that she wasn't providing any income. Awesome. Awesome. So keep going. Because I've heard this so many times, and it's a big deal that sometimes just being in a more stable position allows opportunities to open up.

You can make a transition from a job that might be higher paying but doesn't fit your lifestyle as well as one that's lower paying or a transition to an entrepreneurial venture. It's a big deal to have that stability. Such a huge deal. As a conservative guy as I am, I never would have taken a risky leap.

Right. So, yeah, I was in a really good spot, and it was because I had spent the previous six years building up to that point. And so, yes, for the audience, take that home with you is that you've got to get those personal finances in order first. And it just makes it so much easier to do things like this.

So, yeah, that's certainly the story behind the story. Awesome. So keep going from the point where they try to send you to India and you say, "This job is not fitting my lifestyle." Do you walk in and quit? What happened from there? I was trying to be courteous to my boss, so I told him before I booked my airline ticket that I needed to leave.

And they said, "All right, well, get the heck out of here." So they pretty much kicked me out almost right away. But it was just one of those jobs from a security perspective. They needed to have me leave. So it was over with pretty quick. And it kicked me, pushed me right into the entrepreneurial world full time, which I love.

I relished in it. So I doubled down on the work. I tried to blog like three times a day. I tried all kinds of new revenue streams and just doing different things left and right. It was kind of a mess really for three or four months. And then I met someone who's more sophisticated in the affiliate marketing world.

And he helped me sort of shape my site into a more suitable monetization platform. So he helped me make more money. And I paid him good for that, and we both had a good partnership. And we still have that partnership. He's the ad manager today. And so I credit that for being able to give me the staying power.

There were still issues like health insurance. How do I get that on the side and still have another kid and not have to pay complete out-of-pocket for that? But that's kind of another side story. So how do we get from there? So a year later is when I had the idea for FinCon.

Man, it took us a long time to get to that point. Sorry about that. No, to me, the reason I like to dig into this is often so many entrepreneurial success stories are written so far after the fact that the entrepreneur can hardly remember what it was actually like.

And then the other thing is because most of the time we try to project an image of ourselves, which is how we want the world to perceive us, we often gloss over the nitty-gritty details. But the reality is there were years of hard work for you to make that first transition from your career to the blog.

And all of these things, I'm sure, during those three or four months, because that's the phase that I'm in, where you're trying all these different things and you're trying to figure out what's working. Do I do more? Do I do less? Do I do this? Do I do that?

It's tough, but it's encouraging, I think, for people to hear how other people have been through it. And I like interviewing people who are close enough to that that they can remember the emotion of it and share that to encourage other people. Yeah, and I've written about this on my site.

So if you wanted to share a little more detail about that first year off for me or that first year full time for me, I've written some about it online or at my site. And it was a challenging year. There were lots of ups and downs, mainly having to do with, like I said, our health insurance stuff.

But yeah, I was able to make that transition and then a year later have the freedom to say, "Okay, now that PT Money is my full time gig, what's my next side hustle?" Because I was now living without a side hustle, and that's what FinCon essentially became for me.

And so I mentioned early on in our conversation about sort of this community of people that sort of inspired me to keep going and do this blogging thing. That was the community that really inspired this event. And so the idea was simple. Get these people together in real life.

Come out from behind the nicknames, from behind the blogs, and meet up in real life and just have real conversations and get to know each other. And so that was a simple concept, and you were seeing it happen across different niches in the blogosphere. There was the Wine Blogger Conference.

There was the Fitness Blogger Conference, the Travel Blogger Conference. I mean there were all these sort of sub-blogging conferences going on. And I had been to Blog World Expo, been exposed to that conference and met some peers there, met some other people from our community there as well as at some other events.

And just loved that feeling, loved that feeling of finally kind of getting to meet the people that I've been interacting with online. I can't stress enough how powerful that was for me. And so I always have to remember whenever someone comes to FinCon for the first time, that's the power they're experiencing of the in-real-life event.

We live in this time now where, especially you and I, the majority of our existence is digital, is online, and our interactions are there as well. And so the in-real-life part is so much more powerful now than it used to be in previous industries and in previous worlds and eras.

And so it's just cool to have done an event that brings a good community together. I'll affirm that. Last year in – I guess it was Dallas, right? The FinCon was in some city in Texas. I can't remember which one. It was Dallas or Houston? It was Dallas last year, right?

FinCon? Yes. No, we were in New Orleans. Oh, New Orleans. Excuse me. Okay. New Orleans. You're from Texas and I had met you originally. We met in Dallas. That's right. We met at the Podcast Movement Conference. And then New Orleans. Now I remember. Okay. So just to affirm that, when I walked into – I remember getting off the elevator the first day there at FinCon in New Orleans, and I can picture the hotel.

I just couldn't picture the city. And I just remember you were the first guy that I met, and I walked over and talked to you, and I remember how comfortable you made me feel there. And it was my first time ever being exposed to anybody online. I had watched for a year or two because I'd watched the personal finance space, but I was restricted from being involved in it.

And so I'd watched it a bit jealously when it was in St. Louis and thought, "Man, I really wish I could be there," and Denver, "Man, I really wish I could be there." And then finally being able to meet people, and it was just this immediate feeling of, "Wow, here are people like me.

Here are people who are similar to me, and here is a group of people that I fit with." And I think in our society, more and more, that's going to be increasingly important as time goes on because we spend so much of our time forced into connection and contact with people that we didn't choose to be in connection and contact with.

We're forced to associate with people in school whether we like it or not. We're forced to associate with people in our job whether we like it or not. And for me, it was one of the first times where you can freely associate voluntarily with people that share a common interest.

And it was such a different feeling at that conference at FinCon last year than it was at any large gathering of people that I've been to in the past. I found it really remarkable. Awesome, man. Thanks for that feedback. That's good. So don't lose that focus on welcoming people because I remember it distinctly.

You were one of the first people that I met, and you just made me feel welcome, so thank you. Awesome, man. So you just put out the idea with your friends and they said, "Hey, yeah, this is a good idea. You should do it," or there was a team of people organizing it?

What was the actual starting place? Yeah, so I don't even know how I had the confidence to say I'm going to do this. It was one of those things that batted around in my head for several nights. Before pre-iPhone or pre-smartphone laying in my bed at night, I was just forced to sit there with my thoughts.

Those were the days. So I was just thinking about this conference idea, bringing everyone together on some level and just telling my wife about it, keeping her up. She's like, "Well, just go do it already," and I literally got up from the bed, I think, at that moment and started the website, FinancialBloggerConference.com.

I bought some other ones as well, but that was the one that kind of stuck. So the first thing I did was I asked the people in my forum community – back then we had forums that were awesome – and so I just kind of got a feel from them.

"Hey, is this something you want to do?" and it got a really strong response, "Yes, yes, yes." So then I created the website, just a simple sort of landing page. I did two things. I set up a strong email call to action, so get on the email list so that we can email you information about the conference.

Then I also put up social proof, so I allowed people to like the Facebook page associated with the conference and made those two things the priority on the site from day one. I knew social proof, knowing that other people were going to be there, was going to be super valuable because I wasn't necessarily a big leader in the space.

So I needed to sort of leverage the power of everyone else that was going to be there. So it was either going to be this thing where it was perceived as everyone showed up or it was just sort of this thing where a couple of people went out and went to do.

So I needed to be this thing where everyone showed up and it was understood that it was almost an association type event so that it was – so people could get a sense that everyone that was there and everyone's voice was represented. Do you have a background? That was my vision for the conference was to have everyone there.

So that was important, the social proof aspect. But the email was important too because it got people started down a path of committing and being engaged with the conference. So I started asking them to help me plan and I started asking about what dates would be good. I think I asked them what kind of content they wanted.

I even got granular like would you rather have a hotel here or a hotel here. So I allowed the people who were interested a lot of access to help me kind of plan the event. So it was just me up until about two months out from the conference planning it, doing all the sponsorship, doing all the talk with the hotels.

And then a couple of months out, I got serious and started asking some people to kind of help me work on it. So that was certainly important as we got closer to the event for sure. Do you have a history and background of being a strong leader, willing to organize things and host a party and not care if anyone shows up?

Or were you – just most CPAs that I know are more introverted than extroverted. So I'm just interested to know if you have a strong history as that or if you were kind of – if this was a step of faith for you? Totally a step of faith. Not really though because I was so geeky about this group of people.

That was the power of it was that I was leaning on – my confidence was built in my relationships with these people. So that's where it was strong. And you're right. I'm not an event planner. I'm not a party, "Hey, come to my house," guy. I'm not that person.

In fact, I thought helping my wife with our wedding was going to be the last big party I ever threw. And that was a fun party we threw, but it was – and I did help out a lot with our wedding. So I think most guys don't, but I actually did do a lot.

But I would know I certainly wasn't going to be an event planner the rest of my life. It looked stressful. It looked in some ways unrewarding. And just it wasn't necessarily suited to my personality, I thought. But when you interject the right community and the right group of people, it completely flipped that on its head.

I love doing it. I love preparing this event for these people, my friends and my coworkers now. Not my coworkers necessarily, but my colleagues. And it's easy. It's easy being the extrovert there because these are my people. These are the people I want to be talking with. It's a reunion every time we get together.

So that aspect comes out. Even if you're not an event planner, if it's a community that you are hurting and getting together, it becomes super easy. And so to me that's the initial lesson of VennCon is don't – if you can help it, build an event or something like this around a community that you already love, that you're already a part of.

It makes it so much easier when you're actually building it out. There's so much more forgiveness and so much more reward I think when you've got relationships already with these people. That first year, how did you approach the financial aspect of it? Because obviously you're going to be on the hook for a down payment and a fee of some kind.

It's probably a non-refundable reservation fee with a hotel. It's going to be some financial risk for you. How did you actually work through that? Yeah, so I built two conferences and I also got people on board as much as possible before the event. So like I said, I had the email list.

So I had a pretty big confidence in the number of tickets I could sell. And then when I finally sold tickets, I knew in actuality how much money I had from ticket sales. And so then what I did with sort of the rest of the financial projection, like I said, was I created two conferences.

One that said we're going to have just these baseline sponsorships that cover the cost. If we meet those, then we're going to open up a whole new level of sponsorships, basically exhibitors, that can help pay for additional things, make the conference better, and/or put a little money back in my pocket.

So I sort of built it in two phases. And that was just kind of my conservative approach. I kind of slow walked it. And with the events, really, the first year is a financial challenge, especially with the hotel contract. That was certainly the scariest part. But you don't really have to pay for it until after.

And so as long as you're – the cash flow part, I guess, is what I'm saying, is easy. Because you've sold your tickets, you've got your sponsorship money in, and then you pay the hotel at the end. So like I said, the planning the small conference and then basically proving that model and then opening up for a second level, more risky type of conference where we spend more money, where we commit to more things, knowing that we'll be able to bring in some more sponsorship money and/or sell more tickets.

That's kind of how I treated it. What calendar year was the first conference and how many attendees and tickets did you sell that first year? Yeah, so it was 2011 and we announced the conference around the February, March timeframe, I believe. And we had the conference in September or October.

I forget the actual date. But we ended up selling roughly 250 tickets, 250 people attended. Yeah. So we "sold out." Awesome. Yeah. And do you have any idea of how much it actually – did you make any money that first year? Yeah, so we made about $12,000. Awesome. I say I made.

I took home about $12,000. So I would say probably from tickets and sponsorships was about, let's say, $100,000. And then my expenses were around $85,000. So on an hourly rate, you made about $1.37, but at the end of the year, you did have $12,000 of income. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I know the indirect value from hosting an event is tremendous, and so I learned that lesson the first year. I was actually sort of in the clutches of the Panda Penguin changes that Google was making to its algorithm. Right. And the event and all the backlinks that came back to PT Money, I firmly believe springboarded me sort of out of those clutches.

And so it had a direct impact to the bottom line that PT Money had in 2012. I had the best year ever that PT Money has ever made in 2012. I think it's a direct result of the love, link love, and kind of response from that conference. Right. It automatically made you a de facto leader in the industry, just simply because if no one else was organizing a conference around this, and you've taken the initiative to do that, then -- put it this way.

I never read your blog before I met you or heard of you at FinCon. You weren't on my radar screen. But then automatically, you're catapulted to -- well, this is Philip Taylor. This is the leader of the -- obviously, the organizer of the FinCon conference. He's the de facto leader of this industry.

All kinds of benefits can come from that. Another way of saying that is doing an event allows you to serve a lot of people in a real practical way. It allows you to become a facilitator for them, for the next steps for their life. If FinCon catapulted me and my business at PT Money, it did the same for a lot of other people who attended that event, and hopefully the majority of the people that attended that event.

It took their business and their life to a whole new level because they had that real-life experience. And they got to learn. They got to network. There's an exponential factor there. So, yeah, events are great for building, you know, like you mentioned, kind of authority and trust in the space.

It's a privilege to do it, and there are definitely benefits to do it. And I would encourage everyone out there, if they have a community of people they rally with to form an event, do an event, and get people together. And obviously it has to be done well because something poorly executed doesn't enhance your reputation.

But it's the same with the blog that you established. That brought you to a greater level of authority than simply being a nameless, faceless auditor in a large corporation. So you had some external exposure. Anything that you do over time, and that was what led to the next thing, which led to the next thing, and now I'm certain that with, what, five years of running this conference, you probably have had dozens and dozens of really great opportunities that you would have loved to have had 10 years ago.

But even today, you don't even have the time to pursue them simply because they've come your way through the exposure. Yep, totally. People think of me, thankfully, whenever they come up with new concepts or new ideas for the community, they come to me a lot of times first and either allow me to help partner with them on that or allow me to help vet that idea or kind of put them in a place where they can see it, kind of see it, make it happen.

So, yeah, it's an honorable position, and it's beneficial as well. Like you said, I have to become very good at saying no, saying, "This is awesome, but I've got to focus my time over here," or whatever. So I'd like to ask you about your growth as an entrepreneur and an organizer because what most impressed me about attending FinCon last year was the fact that you seemed, through the entire conference, to be organized, calm, cool, collected.

You had a team of people that were handling the details, and you seemed incredibly free and open, just simply able to visit with people. So I'm interested to know how you learned those skills and what you've done over the last four or five years to transition from never having run a conference to being able to actually be present at the conference, visiting with your friends instead of scurrying around frantically trying to organize all the details.

Yeah, so some of that's my nature, and some of that's certainly the system I try to create. I'm certainly just a pretty chill guy, and so I think even if the place was burning down, I'd be pretty calm. Thankfully, the place didn't burn down, and that's because I feel like I made the calls to make it an event that I could attend and that I wouldn't necessarily be running the whole time.

I still have to run it, but I made this event for me and my community, so as much as possible, I want to go and attend it and be a part of it. And so that was important to me. So what I did a couple of months out from FinCon was I worked with a hotel search firm.

The one I use is Helms Briscoe, and if you're an event planner, you'll quickly get familiar with these companies. They essentially broker on your behalf with the hotels to strike up deals that are a benefit to you. And so when you work with a hotel, it takes a lot of the stress off the event planner.

The hotels, you're paying them a lot of money. You're bringing them a lot of business, and so they actually do a lot of the heavy lifting and the detail work as well. And so you don't have to worry about it. Once you get there and you see the way that hotel staff executes, you'd kind of get it, but they do a lot of the work.

So I'd encourage anyone who's been an event planner, before you say, "Hotels are too expensive," or "I don't want that corporate feel," or whatever, realize that with a hotel, you get a lot of help in terms of executing on the event. I also hired a part-time admin. At the same time, she was working on some PC money stuff with me as well.

So it just kind of worked out that I all of a sudden had an admin to help me plan the event, which was great. Jessica has been a part of the event now for five years. So she was great in helping me make phone calls here and there or work out some of the details.

When I got on site, I made sure that I had a volunteer staff as well as some paid people, and they each had assignments. I scripted it. I scripted the entire event so that everyone knew what they would be doing every five minutes, where they needed to be, what they needed to be doing.

I went to a lot of events before that point. I studied them. I took the best things from them and put them into my event. Also, to a certain degree, people know what to do at a conference. That first year, I didn't quite realize it. I thought I would have to herd cats a little more than I had to.

People understand, even bloggers, understand how to conduct themselves at an event. Most people have been to an event or conference of some sort. People just know how to handle themselves. I think all those things kind of combined to give me that comfort level. I was still nervous. I was still thinking about things.

There was a little bit of bouncing back and forth from room to room or whatever. There were some times we screwed up. For the most part, I think—and this goes back to my original thing—if you're bringing this group of people together, that their main goal is to be together, then you're just going to cover up a lot of sins along the way.

As long as you bring them together and allow them to meet up, allow them to be with each other, it's hard to screw that up. That's the benefit of having a peer or a community type event. I think about most events, there's some kind of entertainment that's scheduled. Whether that's a mixer or something like that, there's usually some type of entertainment.

I always think about that in terms of the after event survey. If it's an event that I actually wanted to be at, I don't even know who—I forget the fact, "Oh, there's music playing." I didn't care about whether or not what the band was or what the kind of music was.

Frankly, I probably was more likely to be outside trying to get away from the noise because I'm there to talk to people. But if you're at an event you don't really want to be at, then you're standing there and you're just watching the music. You're more likely to complain about the fact that the band wasn't exactly the genre that you wanted to hear.

It seems like that lesson, your lesson number one, can, as you say, it covers a lot of problems. Because if people are excited to be together—I had an awesome time at FinCon. I don't think I watched more than three or four of the sessions because the whole time I was there, I watched a couple of the keynotes.

But the whole time I was there, I was just meeting people that I wanted to meet. And so it was an incredible experience for me, but it didn't have so much to do with all of the work that you had done of organizing every detail. It had more to do with the fact that you brought together people that I wanted to be with, and I felt like I was connecting with my homies.

You were, because I made sure that they could be there. That was from day one with the event. I wanted to make sure that everyone—like I said, you got a sense that when you walked in, everyone was there. To me, that was just the simple power of the community that already existed before FinCon created.

So I was lucky enough to see that and to see that these people needed to be together and take action on it. And yes, I do a lot of monkeying around with this event and interjecting things, doing little details here and there. But who knows if that's working or if it's just like we say, just kind of a matter of these people want to be together anyway.

So I could have it in a school gymnasium with brown bag lunch and everyone would still feel the same way about it. I think of those things as important but on the periphery. The example that I'd give from financial planning, in financial planning you have this—there's all of these tools and tactics around, for example, the way to get referrals.

And so if I'm working with somebody, how do I use and craft elegant language that is more likely to get an excellent referral? What frustrates me is I say, "Why don't we spend a lot of time focusing on being really remarkable and doing a really amazing job and then spend a little time honing the language and then you'll get more referrals?" Or if you're writing a website or something, let's spend a lot of time focusing on creating and crafting perfect content that is appealing to people.

But then let's also spend some time making sure that the website is pretty. But if we have to major on one or the other, major on the really important stuff. And I see the same—it's got to be the same in event planning. Spend a lot of time focusing on how can I help people be together but still recognizing that little extra, all those changes and keeping things fresh and new and exciting.

That stuff does matter because we do remember some of those things as time goes on and as you start to be more comfortable. Yeah, I've met these people before. I've met these people before. And then you start to—the other peripheral things start to be more important. Yeah, that's a good way to look at it.

I agree. So over the years, what would be—what are some of the things that you have changed, the things that didn't work that you said, "Okay, we've got to change." And how did you grasp that, get feedback, test it, change, transition? Like how have you approached the process of making things better?

Because FinCon, I've roundly complimented it on this show. And FinCon has a reputation of being probably one of the more fun, more interesting conferences that's in the financial sphere. How have you approached that process of improvement? Yeah, so that email list and those surveys after every conference certainly are something I rely on heavily.

So we poll the audience after every event, get feedback, look at the positive, look at the negative. And I just take my own sort of vibe away from the event and say, "That worked or that didn't," and then immediately go to plan the next one, at least write out my notes.

So that when I can finally get back into it and get the motivation to kind of get going for the next year, that I have those notes and those takeaways. So I listen. I listen to the community. I listen to what people liked and didn't like. And also just kind of take my own perspective and balance that with what the community is thinking.

So just be a listener, pay attention, use email, use surveys as much as possible to kind of get a sense of where everyone is going. Some of the things I've done, let's see. I have created like – not VIP but like different levels of experience at the event. And so even though we are an association and I do want people, most people from the community to be able to access it and come to it, that means – that's a code word for cheap and affordable.

I feel like there are certain people who want more value from the event than sort of the baseline experience. And so we just – over the years, I've tried to craft that both with my sponsors and with my attendees. Sure, come be a part of FinCon, but hey, you want a little more.

You want a little more exposure to this group of people. You want a little more education. You want a little more whatever it is, just basically crafting those sort of more VIP-type experiences for the people. So that's what I've learned, and it allows the event to remain sort of an association type of an event.

But it allows me to bring in some higher value items, and that's been good from a financial perspective because it allows me to I guess get more return for the time and energy I'm putting into the event. Let's see what else. Let's focus on that for a second because I was just going to say I hope that you're making more money than $12,000 now.

But my guess is that you probably still have similar fixed costs and similar ticket prices, but the margin in I think many, if not most businesses is at that edge of the higher value customer, the higher value experience. And you can march people up that ladder. So I came last year with the cheap ticket, but I'm much more likely to say, "OK, I had a great experience.

Let me go ahead and buy the VIP ticket." And let's say – I don't remember what you're charging for tickets, but let's say it's $250 or $200. What are you charging for tickets? $249 right now. OK, $250. The baseline. So let's say that your profit on a $250 ticket is $37, your projected margin.

But on a $600 ticket, your costs don't go up by the same proportion. So you sell a $600 ticket and hopefully you got a few hundred dollars of profit built into that because your fixed costs are primarily being covered by those entry levels. And this is the same in almost every business, at least that I've ever looked at.

Right, right, because it's not as expensive to necessarily create exclusivity. Right, right. Yeah. That's awesome. Are you making more than $12,000 now? Yes. Good. So 2011 we did around $12,000 I think. And then I think we made $30,000 in 2012. That was in Denver. In St. Louis, I think we made roughly the same, maybe $30,000, $40,000.

And then last year was the first year we made six figures on the event. Awesome. Yeah, it was a good year. That's exciting. Yeah. And we've grown the event from 200 folks up to now, let's see, 605 people registered last year. Awesome. So we expect 700 or more this year.

So it's continuing to grow and we're also growing, like I said, the experiences as well. So yeah, it's become more valuable personally, I guess. And you're just taking advantage of the compounding effect where it starts little by little but now hopefully, I mean, there's no reason not to expect it to continue as long as it's well executed.

There's no reason you're in a compounding curve where it can grow and grow and grow. A quick comment here though, most people don't make money on events. And it took me four years, as you saw, to make good money on the event worth the time that I'm putting into it.

Well, I should say to extract cash at the value that I'm putting into it. Right. So I would challenge anyone who's planning on doing an event to look for the indirect value first. Look for the ways that this event can be a brand builder for you or be sort of a springboard for a new product or service that you're launching.

It's much like a blog in that it's really just a channel to deliver. It can be a great channel to deliver some other type of product or service. And so at events, it's information and it's community just like a blog is. And so it's sometimes hard to monetize or it takes a long time to monetize.

And it's easier, I think, to look for the indirect value or look for a way to extract value from it from a different way than just tickets and sponsorships. Because – yeah. So that's my comment there. And it's much the same, though, for attendees as well as for the organizer.

The direct monetary return from an event is hard to measure. But the indirect return can be tremendous. I know for me, I felt like for three, four months on the show, I was just doing an interview every week with somebody that I met at the event, a connection that I made.

I had multiple business opportunities that presented themselves to me out of the event. You can't measure everything directly in terms of dollars in, dollars out. But you can certainly see a net positive gain when taken in totality. So I'd like to explore one other theme here and then we'll kind of wrap up.

I'm interested with one other theme related to the event and then I'm going to switch back to what you've learned about personal finance and your plans for the future. With regard to the financial blogging industry, you have a bird's eye view. It seems to me that things are very different now than they were in 2006, 2003, 2004 when you started.

I started paying attention to the financial blogging industry at that time as well. What are some of the major trends that you've watched happen and what do you see as the future for people who are interested in writing online financial content? Yeah, so first and foremost, this is what I like to call sort of the democratization of personal finance media.

The power of the story has taken over. The power of the personal niche relatable story of personal finance has taken over. It's what Dave Ramsey did. It's what we've done with our blogs and our podcast. You see "traditional media channels" and bigger brands taking on the same sort of model.

So the power of the personal story when it comes to relating to personal finance content is stronger than ever. So I think we've helped facilitate that as a blogging community. And I think we're not journalists. Bloggers aren't – well, how should I frame this? We've just seen an evolution in terms of what – even at the first FinCon, there were big traditional media brands there to cover it.

Like there was someone from MarketWatch there to cover it. And you would think, "Oh, this MarketWatch person. This is so cool to have them there." But I think at the time, maybe the MarketWatch readership didn't even – or it was comparable to Ramit Sethi, who was our keynote speaker.

And Ramit's not considered this necessarily traditional media brand. He was just a blogger just like me. He started in the 2000s. And I don't know where I'm – I guess the overall concept is that it's just – we've seen the small individual media property be able to have an equal playing ground with bigger traditional media sites.

And it's because personal finance to me is relatable in story and personal form like that. And so that's to me one of the big trends. So I'm sorry if I couldn't articulate that well, Josh. Yeah. If you look at the whole industry of journalism, if you think about someone like Matt Drudge with the Drudge Report or Drudge.com, he in many ways wags the tail of the media.

And yet as best of my knowledge, he's got three guys that run – him and two or three other guys that run his site. And yet his site is worth – I don't even know how much money when you compare that to a publication like – just last night I was reading a Newsweek article.

And I went and just was interested in what the readership has happened with Newsweek. And Newsweek, the entire – this story brand of journalism was sold for a buck a few years ago and their readership collapsed just enormously. I think their circulation is something just over a million readers of the magazine now.

And so certainly that's not necessarily anything to sneeze at. But as far as the societal impact, and you think of many individual people who have – individual voices who have hundreds of thousands or millions of readers and followers, there's this huge shift taking place across the spectrum. And then especially in the financial space, it seems like it took a little while for the major brands to wake up.

But now they've woken up and one of my concerns which I'd like you to comment on, it seems to me that because content marketing is now acknowledged as being king, that you've got to be putting out good content. It seems now I feel like we're almost deluged with good content where when you started blogging, there were maybe a couple of great well-known personal finance blogs and several dozens that were good.

But today, there are dozens and dozens of great ones. And so it's a very different competitive environment. How do you see personal finance writers and personalities responding to that to stay relevant and to stand out in a world where now all of the large media organizations can hire dozens of staff writers to pump out content?

Well, I do see a lot of our community working for those bigger brands. And so it's tempting I think to – because it does take a long time to build your personal brand and it is a little more clouded like you said, lots of competing voices. You are seeing a lot from our community sort of go to work for those bigger brands.

And I think that's a positive in general. But I would just say I think it's important for people to focus on story and focus on – in terms of if you're trying to build a platform online, the more unique, original you can be, the better. And so that will never be replaced.

No one can ever go on money.com and write something that is about me and my life and how I'm dealing with my personal finances. I can write that for my site. And so that can never be replaced. Someone could write a similar article, but it won't be my article.

And my article may be the one that resonates with the most people. And when I said democratization earlier, that's what I meant in that my article can compete. It still can compete. And so I think it is crowded, but you can't take away the original uniqueness of the voices that are out there.

And that's why I think it's so important for people to continue niching down, getting more specialized, and sharing what's original and unique to them and kind of extracting from their story what the unique concepts are. I don't know if that's the perspective you're looking for. It's interesting. And like I said, I'm interested in your bird's eye view because you have contact with a lot of people at a lot of stages.

And there's something to be said for inside knowledge. With regard to your personal business structure, has your focus on FinCon taken away from your ability to focus on PT money? Are you blogging as consistently? Are you still 100% focused on PT money? Or have you found a different approach that you prefer working with FinCon?

Yeah. So the first three years of FinCon, PT money was the majority of my business portfolio in terms of income bringing in. And so I was perfectly happy with FinCon being a side project even though it took up a lot of my time because I cared about it. I was passionate about it.

It was still a side project in terms of overall percentage I think of time spent on it. This past year, things have changed for me at PT money. It's not as big a part of my portfolio. I saw this happening just based on traffic alone, search engine traffic alone.

I knew that I wasn't going to do as well with PT money. And so I made a conscious choice to make FinCon – make that more of my focus. And so yeah, I've certainly shifted and FinCon is now – probably takes up 95% of my week. PT money has become something that – because both businesses are lifestyle businesses.

I do have staff. I do have people on commission that help me out. But essentially, they're both lifestyle businesses in the sense that I'm not necessarily above them at an executive level all the time. I am the nitty-gritty with both of them. And so I sort of like that, that it's just me and my businesses and that I'm not trying to grow this necessarily big empire yet.

I may get there one day, but I'm pretty comfortable with the lifestyle approach. So because of that, I've had to sacrifice I think the growth of PT money. Yeah, I think it's sacrifice. There's a book I want to write for that blog. I would love to do more podcasting over there.

I certainly like to write more. Although I am a bit burnt out on writing, there's still things I want to share. And I think if I had more free time, I certainly would share those over there. But with FinCon, I'm just so passionate about it. I'm just so excited about the community that I'm looking for ways to serve the community 24/7 versus just any event.

And that's sort of another lesson that I've learned is that you don't have to just see this one-off thing every year. To serve the community online sort of ends up becoming a media property. That's what I'm doing with FinCon to a certain degree with our blog and our podcast and things we do 24/7.

So there's so much potential with FinCon. I see it, and so that's where I've shifted my energy. PT money, I love it. I'll be honest with you, I haven't figured out the next steps, what to do. But it's doing good, and it's sort of downshifted. It's still maintaining good traffic and good readership.

I think we're still sharing good content. We haven't sacrificed there. So yeah, that's sort of what's going on when we try to push and grow FinCon. To me, that seems like the natural evolution of business, and it seems like it takes time to find opportunities that fit us. And what happens is we often expect that the way that career planning is traditionally advised, you're supposed to know at 18 years old what you want to do with the rest of your life.

You're supposed to sit down, figure out the industry, go to school, get a college degree in that industry so you're qualified, and then go and build a career. That's the impression that many people have. You build a career in one industry and then you go on. Well, the facts demonstrate that nobody does that.

The facts demonstrate that we're changing careers, we're changing companies frequently, and even the same with entrepreneurial ventures. I think there's a time that you see a need and a demand in a marketplace and then you adjust as time goes on. And so I love just hearing that story and hearing how you've taken, you know, "Okay, I started a blog." That exposure opened it up, that blog started to make some money.

Then that phase of financial blogging seems to have changed where it seems much more challenging to compete and to sell advertising in the same way that you originally started with. Not that it's not doable, but it's very different now. You saw another need, filled that, and at some point, who knows?

I would say there's probably massive growth potential with FinCon like you just said. But at some point, that market may change and you might close that and transition to something else. I just find it valuable to point that out because oftentimes we expect that everything's going to be exactly the way it is today.

That's not life. Life changes and comes in phases. And being an entrepreneur, at least for me, there's never been a point to where I've felt like I've got it all figured out. There's always a bump along the road or a quick turn here and there that just makes you rethink things.

But that's sort of where you have to live as an entrepreneur. I think that's why I enjoy having two businesses is because when one's good, the other one can have a miss here and there. And that's okay because you've got the other one. So always having a side hustle, I think that rule still applies even when you have your own business out there.

At least it does for me. I'm comfortable working with that kind of environment. So, yeah, the ebbs and flows are there. And the quicker you realize that that's the natural part of it, I think the quicker you're going to see success. So knowing that you're going to live on that edge a little bit.

It's fun. I'm glad I get to do it. And, yes, I am looking for that next thing coming down the pipe. So I keep my eye out for that next opportunity. I need to kind of close the door on PT Money, figure out whether I need to be an executive there or what I need to kind of happen with that business.

But, yeah, maybe I need to do that before I can see that next thing. So, yeah. To build the capacity back. If you're still working on one business and you're not building the capacity for the next great thing. My final question is this. I'd like for you to share a little bit about how you have grown over the last 10 to 13 years with regard to your view on personal finance.

You started in debt. You started kind of just not really applying things. You pulled some basic principles from some teachers and applied them. And now you've transitioned and you're probably making, I hope, making more money than you've made before. And I'm sure your lifestyle has changed a little bit.

What has stayed consistent for you over the last 10 to 15 years? And what has changed with your personal goals, your financial goals, and your own financial processes over the last decade and a half? Yeah. So something that's definitely stayed with me from my early days is investing in tax deferred or tax advantaged retirement accounts as much as possible, maxing those out.

I started doing that three or four years into my career. My dad stressed that with me from my studying for the CPA. I knew how important that was, and so that's something that's always stuck with me. Maxing out my 401(k) at work, getting the match, those kind of things have stuck.

Getting debt out of my life permanently, I think, was something I've learned to grow into. And it helped that my wife and I had dual incomes, good incomes coming in. We were able to get rid of that debt. But I think continuing to say no to debt going forward is something I've had to learn because there's certainly been opportunities where I could have leveraged some more debt, and I've just chosen not to do that.

We have our mortgage here as well as a rental property, and I do have debt on that rental property. But that's an income-producing asset for me, and I'm comfortable with that level. We are going to try to pace some of that down in the next couple of years. Those are goals because we've met some of our retirement goals pretty early here.

But getting focused back on the message here is that automatic savings – I mentioned reading David Bach's book early on. That's something that's also stuck with me since I read that. That's been very powerful in my life because before that point, I was waiting to the end of the month to transfer what was left over in my checking account over into savings.

I felt good about that, but it didn't always happen every month. Then there were some months where I needed to pull that money back out. It felt like I was never really seeing progress. Until I switched over to a more automatic approach where it happened as soon as I got my paycheck, it was not necessarily a big amount but enough to get some traction going.

It was going to a place that was separate, so it was going to a separate savings account, something that wasn't necessarily directly attached to my checking account. I couldn't access it as easily, or it was going to a Roth IRA. There was some separation as well as that automation.

I think those two things have stuck with me, and I've seen progress over the years. My retirement accounts have grown. My little cash accounts for down payments or for Christmas funds or whatever have grown for me. That's something that I hammer on my own side, and that concept of automating and separating has been huge for me and really impactful for me in my life.

Regardless of how much I've made through the years, I've made savings a priority first, and so that's worked for me. Like I said, keeping debt out of our lives is important. We don't want car loans. We're going to encourage certainly our kids to stay away from that. What's changed?

What would be some of the topics, or just pick one maybe, that you would have written about in the first few years that today you would say, "I'm in a different place. I see differently now"? Oh, certainly the travel hacking space. When I was first getting going, I had some actual – well, maybe I had a small amount of credit card debt that I put on a balance transfer card and then eventually paid off.

Then I spent three or four years during that phase, probably '07 to 2010, where I didn't do debt at all in terms of credit cards. Then 2010, 2011, I started back with the rewards or travel hacking model. Now I'm back fully into using credit cards for all of my purchases, paying them off in full every month but gaining the rewards to use for free travel.

That's an area I've completely evolved in. That took some time and evolution. It'll be getting over the whole sphere of debt and getting comfortable back using cards again. Investing has pretty much stayed the same. I've probably gone more passive as I've gotten older in terms of my retirement investing.

I invest pretty much 100% into one of Vanguard's index funds. I forget the actual name of it. I think it's the 2040 Target Retirement Fund. That's pretty much where we put everything. I've just trended more and more toward doing more low-cost, passive investments for our retirement. What else? Is there anything else?

The credit cards thing is a big one. I don't use credit cards. I don't use them for anything. I pay cash. Then over time, there are these benefits. Now I've learned the discipline in myself to be able to handle that. Now can I use that and enjoy these other benefits?

Is there anything else, dramatic change or reversal? It's okay if they're not, but is there anything else that's a dramatic change for you? I think that's probably the biggest. We do have some real estate now, like I mentioned, but that was a very conservative effort. I always felt like I wanted to get into real estate.

That's a big, big change. Definitely, I think the credit card is probably the biggest. I appreciate this has been fun just to hear and learn. I think there are a lot of lessons in your story that can be applied basically by anybody. It starts with personal responsibility, taking responsibility for where you are, focusing on changing and then pursuing the opportunities as they come.

Then going where the market leads instead of saying, "I've got to figure it all out and this is the direction I'm going to go," having a direction that's based upon what the market is saying and then being willing to adjust it over time. As we wrap up, I would like you to just plug FinCon 2015 and mention about it because I'm excited to be there.

Plug FinCon 2015 and let people know where they can find out info and purchase tickets if they're interested. Yeah. FinCon '15 is happening in Charlotte this September 17th through 20th. It's our fifth annual event, so we're excited. Like I said, we're going to be bringing together hopefully over 700 folks to hear 75-plus awesome speakers, including yourself, Mr.

Joshua Sheehan. I'm excited about that. Looking forward to having you there and giving back to the community this year and also bringing your podcast there. That would be wonderful as well. It's a fun time. If you're into the content creation side of personal finance, it's the place to be, even if you just want to come see Josh.

Just come to Charlotte. We've got tickets on sale already. They are at early bird prices right now, and I think those go up at the end of March. So you've got a couple of weeks here to take action to save a little money on your FinCon pass. We've also got a virtual pass if you can't attend.

That's available. It's just a good time. We've got Mr. Carl Richards from Behavior Gap who's going to be one of our keynote speakers, so I'm sure he's of interest to a lot of your audience. It's a good group of people coming together, and it's going to be a fun time.

You can check everything out at FinConExpo.com. Yeah, the Joshua Sheets speaking engagement, that's going to be the best one at the conference. I'm quite confident of that, so you definitely want to be there. And then I'm going to be bringing my mobile interview gear. I'll be doing a bunch of interviews there from the show.

I hope we're going to do the live podcasting stage again. That was super fun. And I won't be doing another individual show. I will say that. I will definitely be doing that as either a roundtable format or an interview. It was one of the most challenging shows I ever recorded last year where usually the way that podcasting works is that I'm just in front of my microphone with just me, and I can visualize the audience.

Or you're giving a speech where the audience is giving feedback. But where a few people are listening to me here and there, and I'm still giving this individual talk, that was quite nerve-wracking. So I've learned my lesson. And for any other podcasters who are going to be participating in that, do it either as an interview format or as a discussion format.

I think it will create a better product, and you'll feel a lot better. But it was really fun. I enjoyed it. So awesome. Philip, thanks so much for coming on. I appreciate it very much. Thanks for having me, man. My pleasure. Make sure you notice the themes and not just the content.

I know there's plenty there in that interview, but make sure you notice the themes and not just the specific ideas. Always look for what's most relevant to your life when you listen to interviews like this. Look for the ideas. So for example, maybe PT peaked an interest in for you in travel hacking.

You say, "Wow, I should go check that out. I haven't done much on the show yet with that right now, but at some point I will." But also just look for the themes and recognize that if you're working through building the foundation in your life, that's fine. I don't think he could have succeeded at building PT money if he hadn't been on a good foundation, and he took the knowledge from all of his interest in personal finance and put that into practice and then transitioned to a new business.

But without PT money, he never could have understood and been a part of the community, of the financial blogging community, that gave him the foundation that he needed to build onto with the conference. Now at this point, I'm sure he's going to have many more business opportunities and ideas that will emerge out of the conference that will lead him to the next thing.

That's life. You don't always have to have everything figured out in advance where you know exactly, "Well, this is going to lead to that and that's going to lead to the next thing and then here's exactly how it's going to go." If you have some idea of a direction, sometimes you just got to start walking and the doors will open up to you.

But that doesn't mean that you can't be responsible along the way, that you can't lay a solid foundation in many things that will serve you well as time goes forward. So take that and implement that in your own life. I would love to see you at FinCon. Do go check out FinConExpo.com.

I will be there. I will be speaking. It's going to be the best. As I said, it's going to be the best one in the show. You should make sure to do that. Also, those of you who are in Charlotte, I will make sure to host some sort of meetup or something for the Radical Personal Finance audience while I'm up there.

That will be in September. Looking forward to that. And I think that's it. If you'd like to support the show, please go to RadicalPersonalFinance.com/patron. That's my way of making money. Instead of bringing you advertisers, that's advertising. That's my way of monetizing. And we're doing well. We're trying to get 6,000 a month by June so that I can kiss advertising goodbye.

That's the goal. So we're working towards that. Go to RadicalPersonalFinance.com/patron for all the details on that. Love to see you all there. Thanks. Thank you for listening to today's show. If you'd like to contact me personally, my email address is Joshua@RadicalPersonalFinance.com. You can also connect with the show on Twitter @RadicalPF and at Facebook.com/RadicalPersonalFinance.

This show is intended to provide entertainment, education, and financial enlightenment. But your situation is unique, and I cannot deliver any actionable advice without knowing anything about you. Please, develop a team of professional advisors who you find to be caring, competent, and trustworthy, and consult them because they are the ones who can understand your specific needs, your specific goals, and provide specific answers to your questions.

I've done my absolute best to be clear and accurate in today's show, but I'm one person and I make mistakes. If you spot a mistake in something I've said, please help me by coming to the show page and commenting so we can all learn together. Until tomorrow, thanks for being here.

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